Advanced Nuclear Energy Research Transcends Political Climate

Many in the global community may be wrestling with whether to continue their nuclear programs, including some policymakers in the United States. But the country’s national research laboratories say that they are busy devising advanced reactors -- the kind that could minimize Fukushima-like accidents.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster has compounded what remains a persistent problem, which is the high capital costs associated with building such plants and the relative risks tied to those investments. The goal of the mostly federally-funded research institutions is to work with industry to create safer and more efficient reactors, which includes not just the larger centrally-operated plants but also the smaller modular reactors that are pieced together on site.

“We harvest the information that helps the analysts,” says Mitch Farmer, senior nuclear engineer at the Argonne National Lab in Chicago, in an interview. “We have learned to sharpen our pencils, and politics is not affecting our jobs. The only real inhibitor is the capital costs, which we are also trying to address.”

Here, he explains that the traditional mechanism to share information has been in place for decades -- one where the United States starts the technical process that is shared at global conferences with the universities and the industry, which applies those lessons. In its quest to build ever-better nuclear units, the lab uses flexible designs whereby it can easily experiment with new ideas. “We have more work than we can actually do,” says Farmer.

English: Byron Nuclear Generating Station in Ogle County, Illinois, USA. The facility was constructed by Babcock and Wilcox and has two Westinghouse pressurized water reactors, unit 1 and unit 2, which first began operation in September 1985 and August 1987 respectively. The plant was built for Commonwealth Edison and is currently owned and operated by Exelon Corporation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Despite the uncertain political and economic environments, most of the national research laboratories have dedicated themselves to making nuclear technologies safer and better. The roughly 100 nuclear reactors running here are second-generation light-water facilities, all of which operate near capacity. So-called third-generation light-water reactors have been built overseas and particularly in Asia.

Fourth-generation reactors will follow, or those that are “Very High Temperature Reactors.” The national labs are spearheading this effort and by 2021, they must have a final design. Construction could begin soon after.

"Third generation" and "fourth generation" high temperature reactors differ in that the latter may operate at about three times the temperature of today's light water reactors. That results in higher thermal efficiency and the potential for use in industrial applications and hydrogen production -- making them economically appealing. Advocates furthermore say that the odds of any leaks are near zero.

“They can prevent a Fukushima-type disaster,” says Farmer.

Some nuclear researchers say that they are focused on right-size reactors that are smaller – between 100 megawatts and 300 megawatts. In the case of Sandia National Laboratory, it is actively working with other nations where their transmission grids cannot handle larger generation to implement the technology. To maximize efficiencies, the lab wants to couple its efforts with other endeavors such as desalination and the creation of potable water.

Researchers must prove the worthiness of those prototypes. Once the projects are shown to be feasible, the labs can then take various components of the smaller facilities and use them to form a base-load facility to supply electricity on a much larger scale. That process won't happen overnight. But it is doable.

Here, Babcock and Wilcox is working with
Bechtel Corp. to develop small nuclear reactors for the Tennessee Valley Authority while NuScale is working with
Fluor Corp. NuScale was recently given some federal monies, which total about $450 million -- something that company says will help commercialize the first smaller nuclear reactors within a decade.

And, finally, there’s thorium, a fuel source best suited to run in fourth generation “liquid fuel” reactor. Thorium has much higher melting point, making it far less likely to “meltdown” inside of the reactor’s core. It would be used in molten salt reactors, which must reach high level temperatures to melt a salt solid. That liquid and fuel mixture is then used as a coolant in the fuel cycle.

“It will leapfrog the current generation of reactors” that rely on uranium, says David Martin, deputy director of research with the Weinberg Foundation in the United Kingdom, in an email exchange with this writer.

“Since U.S researchers are already actively collaborating with China on this program, we would expect the scientific and engineering know-how to be shared with the United States, which would greatly accelerate thorium molten salt reactor development in America -- provided that the U.S. Government is wise enough to see their benefits and to license such reactors on home soil,” Martin says.

While nuclear energy proponents are optimistic about new reactor designs and the potential role they might play in producing an increased amount of electricity, opponents remain vigilant. Critics of thorium, for example, say that it is still difficult to maintain high thermal efficiencies, which diminishes the economic case for those liquid fuel reactor’s over today’s technologies.